Itineraries and Town Views in Ottoman Histories

12 · Itineraries and Town Views in Ottoman Histories ]. M. ROGERS The illustrated histories of the Ottoman Empire, now foreign styles (the principal works discussed in this chap considered to be an outstanding development of Turkish ter are listed in appendix 12.1). In the late fifteenth and miniature painting, also constitute an original contribu early sixteenth centuries, distinguished miniature painters tion to cartography. After the conquest of Constanti from Persia and Central Asia were brought to work in nople in 857/1453, Sultan Me~med II concentrated his Istanbul, but the Ottoman rulers must also have been policies on consolidating power and securing prestige, familiar with the developing fashion for town views in through the patronage of art and architecture and the Europe. These respective contributions require further production of manuscripts for his imperial library. A sig study, however. Likewise, there is some question when nificant aspect of this was the chronicling of the Ottoman such illustrations first came to be included in the histories. dynasty: an official court historian was appointed to Several manuscripts containing nonrealistic representa record the lives and achievements of the Ottoman rulers tions survive from the early sixteenth century.3 There in a series of §ahnames (panegyric royal histories). By follows a remarkable forty-year period of experimenta about 944/1537, these were coming to be illustrated, and tion in style and technique, characterized by the frequent this pictorial element became an integral part of Ottoman use of maps or plan views to portray historical events. historiography. The images in the Nuzhetill-abbar der sefer-i Sigetvar These histories were designed, above all, to record the might and power of the Ottoman Empire. In the first half This survey would not have been possible without the patient help of the sixteenth century, the Ottomans took advantage of colleagues, in particular Tony Campbell, Helen Wallis, and Norah of the dynastic rivalry between the Habsburgs and the M. Titley of the British Library, Filiz ~agman, librarian of the Topkapi Valois to make extensive territorial gains in Europe and SarayI, Zeren Tanindl of Bursa University, Giinsel Renda, Hacettepe University, Ankara, and John Rowlands, keeper of prints and drawings to control much of the Mediterranean. The Ottomans in the British Museum. The European source material to which they also faced a militant Safavid dynasty whose disruptive have drawn my attention could be considerably expanded, though that, influence in Anatolia required constant vigilance in the I think, would not much alter the conclusions advanced here. The empire's eastern frontier zones.1 The illustrated histories Islamic material is, anyway, less familiar to readers of this work and therefore glorified the political and cultural achievements accordingly takes first place. An attempt has been made to standardize the innumerable variant names of sixteenth-century Italian mapmakers, of these Ottoman campaigns, not only in the visual record but it has not seemed useful to distinguish between authors and pub of victories and military conquests they contain, but also lishers, since so much remains unclear or unknown. in depictions of the pomp and circumstance of the Otto 1. Adel Allouche, The Origins and Development of the Ottoman man court. $afavid Conflict, Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, vol. 91 (Berlin: Klaus A distinctive element of this imperial imagery was its Schwarz, 1983), esp. 130-45. There is no general work on the Ottoman Habsburg-Valois rivalry in the sixteenth century. For an overview, the emphasis on the "actuality of contemporary history": the essays in The Cambridge History of Islam, 2 vols., ed. P. M. Holt, realistic depiction not only of the personages involved, Ann K. S. Lambton, and Bernard Lewis, vol. 1, The Central Islamic but also of the landscapes where events took place.2 The Lands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), esp. 295-353, itinerary map, the town plan, and the bird's-eye view and The New Cambridge Modern History, 2d ed., vol. 2, The Refor incorporated as book illustrations thus became natural mation, ed. Geoffrey R. Elton (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni'/ersity Press, 1984), are recommended. instruments of the palace chronicler. Sultans, viziers, and 2. Eleanor G. Sims, "The Turks and Illustrated Historical Texts," in ambassadors appear as recognizable figures in specific his Fifth International Congress ofTurkish Art, ed. Geza Feher (Budapest: torical settings with the architecture, the landscape, and Akademiai Kiado, 1978), 747-72, esp. 750. details characteristic of each particular region. 3. The earliest extant illustrated history, the ~ahname(Book of kings) Of the histories commissioned for imperial libraries, by Melik Ommi (ca. 906/1500), contains seven miniatures by an artist trained perhaps in Shiraz, and the Selimname (History of Sultan Selim approximately thirty extant illustrated manuscripts com I) by ~iikri Bidlisi (ca. 931/1525) contains twenty-five miniatures (Istan posed in 944-1039/1537-1630 are devoted to the record bul, Topkapi Sarayl Muzesi Kutiiphanesi, H. 1123 and H. 1597-98, of (ontemporary events in a mixture of indigenous and respectively). 228 Itineraries and Town Views in Ottoman Histories 229 (Chronicle of the Szigetvar campaign, composed 976/ to predict; and appropriately specialized painters must 1568-69) by A1).med Ferldun, herald the appearance of have been difficult to find. Even under Murad Ill, when a mature, formalized Ottoman illustrative style, which in the studio was far more thoroughly incorporated into the turn influenced the way maps and topographical views higher bureaucracy and the former na~~a~ba~t (chief were used to portray geographic reality. painter) Hasan was actually granted the distinguished title These illustrated dynastic chronicles reached their apo of pa~a, it was not unknown for illustrated manuscripts gee during the reigns of Murad III (982-1003/1574-95) for the sultan to be commissioned and executed outside and Me1).med III (1003-12/1595-1603), at a time when the studio. This seems notably to have been the case both Seyyid Lo~man ibn Huseyin ibn el-cA§uri el-UrmevI held with Mu~tafa CAlI's (948-1008/1541-1600) presentation the post of ~ehniimeci(official court historian). Ottoman copy of his Nu~retname (Book of victories) and with his illustration of this later period shows its growing indebt record of imperial festivities in Istanbul, Camic u>l-bulJur edness to European printed views and maps that were der mecalis-i sur. Though this latter work remained un circulating freely throughout the empire. With declining illustrated, he evidently intended to have it illustrated in imperial power in the latter part of the seventeenth cen Baghdad.5 Such works show the dangers of reading back tury, however, far fewer manuscripts came to be illus into earlier sixteenth-century Ottoman Turkey the orga trated for the imperial library, and the tradition of illus nized bureaucratic structure of the palace studio under trated histories, created for the personal use of the sultan, Murad III. suffered the most serious neglect. Although military maps and sea charts continued to be drawn on vellum for durability, Ottoman illustrated manuscripts were practically always on paper. The THE COMPILATION OF ILLUSTRATED sources refer to paper from Samarkand, India, and Bagh HISTORIES dad, but Islamic paper types of the time had no water Manuscript illustration in later Muslim cultures has marks, and so far it is impossible to locate the sources always tended to be centralized in palaces. The value of of manufacture with any certainty. Bagdad! paper had a the materials-fine paper, precious pigments, and gold standard format, a full sheet being somewhat similar to carried a constant danger of pilferage and close super folio size. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Otto vision was essential. At the same time, the urgency of man manuscripts increasingly came to be written on imperial demand required a concentration of expert European papers, particularly, to judge from the water craftsmen-calligraphers, marginators, illuminators, marks, Genoese, although the frequent occurrence of sev painters (na~~a~an), and binders-to see the manuscript eral different watermarks in the same manuscript may expeditiously through its production stages from the first indicate that the supply was limited. Alternatively, as draft to finished book.4 account books for manuscript production in this period Some of these individuals advanced to high rank in demonstrate, the paper was doled out to the calligraphers their professions and it is highly probable that they influ in very small quantities. enced the organization of the studio. It is nevertheless By the late sixteenth century, the production of illus difficult to trace the participation of known individuals trated manuscripts for the palace library was more or less in the fine manuscripts made for the Ottoman palace standardized (plate 17). The chronicler first completed a before the later sixteenth century. Though production in draft, which may have been submitted to the sultan for a palace studio by a permanent salaried staff no doubt represented an ideal in Ottoman bureaucracy, at least 4. N a~~ll§ (Persian; plural na~~ii§lln) is an all-encompassing term na~~ii§ba§t until the death of Suleyman I the Magnificent (r. 926 applied to the palace painters and decorators with the at their head. The studio

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